• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.134-138
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to analyse the argument alternations in terms of semantic perspective. Argument alternation has long been an interesting topic for the linguists regardless of their linguistic schools. Semantic analysis of argument alternation is attempted by Dowty(2001) based on the Levin(1993)'s classification. The study is focused on the phenomenon where meaning changes with argument alternations even though those sentences look the same syntactically and lineally. 1 tried not only to classify verbs according to the meaning changes but to explain the alternations in semantic point of view. The verbs are divided into 4 types- Touch type, Hit type, Cut type, and Break type. Each type of verbs are tested if they show special characteristics with three alternations-Middle alternation, Body-part possessor Ascension, and Conative Alternation. And semantic analysis is tried based on that classification.